Austria: Future Factory – hands-on career guidance

Investing in the skilled workers of the future

The world of work is complex and changes all the time. To choose the right education or career pathway, it is important that young people can look to the future with practical ways of discovering their own interests, talents and the many different education and career options available. With their extensive education and career guidance offers, all of the Austrian Economic Chambers play a key role in providing young people with orientation and ensuring there is a supply of skilled workers for companies.

With this in mind, the Economic Chamber of the province of Burgenland has established the Future Factory, a regional career experience centre that opened in early March 2026.

Covering an area of 500 square metres, the centre enables students to check out occupational activities in a fun way at themed stations and to discover their interests and talents in a hands-on environment. A total of EUR 1.2 million has been invested in the project.

Five stations – five worlds

At the Future Factory, pupils complete a variety of tasks in both real and virtual environments across five themed worlds (stations). Unlike other approaches to career guidance, the primary focus is not on assessing interests and abilities but on exploring occupations in a fun and hands-on way. Compared with other forms of real-life encounters, which are often limited to a few occupations and activities, the Future Factory gives the opportunity to experience a wider range of them.

Five stations are available:

• construction and housing: pupils build a roof framework, for example, or use an excavator simulator to discover how it feels to move heavy machinery;
• office, commerce and media: the activities include handling purchases at the barcode checkout of a candy shop, calculating prices, and furnishing an apartment in a 3D simulation;
• health, beauty, fashion: pupils explore about care professions, experiment with tattooing in a beauty salon and try their hand as a fashion designer;
• sustainability and technology: tasks range from repairing damage to a vehicle body and checking out a digital welding robot on to controlling a robotic arm. An energy wall also demonstrates how the world can be made more environmentally friendly in the future;
• tourism and food: pupils experience how to decorate a table in a fine-dining restaurant or prepare their own freshly made smoothies.

Pupils explore the individual stations in small groups and are accompanied by guides. At the end, they receive a certificate of participation as well as an individual profile of interests developed during the tour.

Easy access

The Future Factory is for pupils in the seventh school year (12 to 13 years old). The tour lasts five hours in total. To help younger children to also become curious about the world of work, a special shorter format with age-appropriate activities is available for children in the first year of primary school (6 to 7 years old).

Participation is free of charge and schools can sign up via the Future Factory website. In addition, the Economic Chamber covers travel expenses to and from the centre and organises a free bus service whenever public transportation is not available.

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